The Atlantic Was Born Today
by Solstice Zero
Summary: Ianto is seasick. Gwen brings tea. And some less obvious things.


**The Atlantic Was Born Today (And I'll Tell You How)**

She found him sitting on a long wooden bench in the shelter of the upper deck, and stood for a moment to watch at a distance, listening to the roll of rain on the exposed deck floor. Ianto sat hunched into his coat against the cold, staring down at his knees. Of course the way back home had to be rough with a storm. Of course. The way from Wales to Ireland had been beautiful, the water flat and the sky clear and sunny, and Ianto had been too distracted fussing over the SUV and their hotel reservations and being bothered by a bored Owen to notice that he was on a ferry in the middle of the Irish Sea. Now, there was nothing else to concentrate on – or nothing that he wanted to concentrate on. She could see that he'd already been to the railing to boot, the poor thing; his hair was wet and flat against his skull, his fringe dripping. She hesitated for a moment longer with two paper cups of tea warming her hands, then she started over to him, her boots loud on the deck.

She sat next to him and offered the cup, saying, "Here." He looked at her, then the cup, blinking and pale, uncomprehending. She shook it gently. "It has ginger. It'll help."

Ianto reached out and took the cup with both hands, then stared down at it in his lap, as though he didn't know quite what to do with it.

Gwen settled back against the bench, crossing her legs. "It's a _nat_ural remedy, apparently. Something to do with the valve at the bottom of the stomach." She sipped her own tea. "Quiets nausea."

Ianto took a sip, then waited, as if testing. "How do you know any of that?" he asked, soft.

Gwen smiled fondly. "Rhys gets seasick," she said. "We didn't know until we were on our honeymoon and he was hurling over the side of a yacht. I couldn't find any dramamine, so I asked Wikipedia."

"The bearer of all knowledge," Ianto muttered, watching the floor beneath his shoes. "I spend a few hours a week editing aliens out of the Cardiff entry. And _'Cardiff Castle is roughly half the size of my enormous cock._'"

Gwen smirked. "You could probably trace that back to Jack's computer."

Ianto stiffened. Gwen winced internally. Smooth move, that. She looked away, silent, to watch the sea churn with the rain and the waves, the rough dark lines heading out to meet the troubled grey sky at some unimaginable distance. She tapped her fingers against the side of her cup. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Ianto breathe through a wave of nausea, paling further, one hand gripping the edge of the bench to throw himself forward if he needed to race for the railing.

When it passed, he sat back, and looked up at the overhang of the upper deck. "I think Jack's angry with me," he said quietly.

Gwen closed her eyes and counted to five, gripping her cup hard in both hands. "He isn't," she said.

Ianto let out a long breath that told her he didn't believe her, like she knew he would. There were times when speaking to Ianto was like shouting over a ten foot wall. He was unreadable, unpredictable, so filled with low-level complications and high-level camouflaging that it was impossible to get a fix on exactly what was happening inside of his head. Then, there were times like this, where he was obvious. Textbook. He was projecting.

"It wasn't your fault, Ianto." She ran her thumb back and forth over the opening in the lid of her cup. "You know it wasn't."

"No," he said. He hunched further into his coat. "I don't know that."

"You tried," she said, looking over at him.

She watched as he ran a hand back and forth through his hair, flicking water out in all directions, his elbow on his knee. "I was slow."

Gwen shook her head and looked away. Jack wasn't angry at him. _No one_ was angry at him. The job in Ireland had been a cock up from start to finish, working on bad information from an unreliable source, and Jack had been _so certain_ that they would be able to stop the alien causing trouble before it managed to hurt anyone. Then it had turned on a child, with Ianto the only one close enough, and Ianto had drawn too slow.

The look on Jack's face when Ianto lowered his gun. Jack wasn't angry at Ianto. Jack was angry at _himself_. Because the look on Ianto's face had been one of absolute horror, of abject guilt, and Jack knew that the scene would stay with Ianto for a long while, would be there every time he touched his gun. Gwen knew it, too, as she watched him wallow in it, out in the cold with a storm a few feet in front of him, nauseous and pale not just from the tossing of the boat, but from the shame.

She reached over and wrapped his hand in hers. "Ianto," she said. He looked at her, frowning, and she kept his eyes. "It wasn't your fault. It really wasn't."

He broke away from her eyes and looked out at the violent sea. He paled again and closed his eyes against the nausea, breathing slow. "I'm not meant to do this, Gwen. I'm a glorified accountant with a weapon. I'm not like you and the others. This was never what I was supposed to be doing." He shook his head. "I don't know why he put me out in the field in the first place, he can't even trust me to shoot at a moving target when it's attacking a child right in front-"

Gwen squeezed his hand, hard enough to hurt. "Stop," she said. "Stop it."

He looked at her, miserable. "This is going to keep happening."

"It's not." He looked away, and she let go of his hand to take his chin and drag his eyes back to hers. "Listen to me," she said. "You save hundreds of people every single day. This was one time. You can feel bad about it, because God knows I feel bad about all of the times I've screwed up and let someone get hurt. But you _can not give up_. Do you hear me?" She paused, watching him take it in. "There are going to be times like this. There have to be. But you need to keep going. Giving up doesn't help. Neither does sitting around feeling sorry about it." She let go of him.

He kept looking at her for a moment. Then he let his head drop, his eyes falling to the cup in his lap. He let out another loose breath.

"Thank you for the tea."

Gwen glanced down the other side of the deck, struggling to subdue the small smile fighting its way to her lips. "My pleasure," she said. From the corner of her eye, she saw him drink deep.

"It's a shame I don't like ginger," he said, looking at the cup with distaste, and she laughed.

"Despite that, it still should work." She took the empty cup from him and bent to set it on the ground beside her own. Sitting up, she said, "It also helps to close your eyes and rest. Sleep, if you can. Something about the eyes and the brain disagreeing about movement."

Ianto smiled very, very slightly. "Is this another bit of Dr. Wikipedia?"

"He has a PhD in medicine and a Master's in pictures of cats." She patted her own shoulder. "Come on. Prescribed rest. There's an hour or two yet of stormy seas."

Ianto's lips twitched a little further. "Do you honestly expect me to sleep while ill in the middle of a storm?"

"I expect you to try," she said, and pulled him over so that his head was against her shoulder. He laughed, surprised and a little awkward, unsure of whether to pull away or remain where he was. But she leaned down to retrieve her still-full cup of tea, and settled back so that he could be comfortable, and looped her arm in his so he would stay. So he relaxed against her, letting unspool the tense coil of his back and shoulders.

"I promise not to boot on your coat," he mumbled.

"Appreciated."

Gwen sipped from her tea and took in the clouds rolling away above the water, listening to Ianto's slowly changing breathing. Somewhere in the distance, there was land. Sometime tomorrow, Jack and Owen and Tosh would arrive back in Wales, and they would all get through their failure the way they always did. It was good to know the eventualities, sometimes, when the world was predictable, when you had enough perspective to see the whole thing. She felt that she did, sitting silently, watching the dark, rough sea. The storm would end, she knew. The sea would sleep.


End file.
